The Montpelier Happy Hour Olga Peters

April 19, 2024 (prerecorded 4/16): A study bill on regional governance, clarifying tax sales, and municipal ethics are a few of the bills being considered by the Legislature this session. Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations, and Ted Brady, executive director of Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT) provide a municipal perspective.
To learn more about VLCT: https://www.vlct.org
Some of the bills discussed:
S.159 - Regional Governance: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2024/S.159
H.629 - Tax sales and tax abatement: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2024/H.629
H.875 - State Code of Ethics: https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2024/H.875
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net

April 12, 2024: Rep. Tristan Toleno serves on the House Committee on Appropriations and the State Workforce Development Board. It's one of the reasons he read the entire State of Vermont Workforce Report. As he characterizes it, the state has a hiring AND retention problem. Tristan walks us through some of the issues he's seeing and the pressures its putting of the state budget.
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net
To read the report: https://humanresources.vermont.gov/sites/humanresources/files/documents/DHR-Workforce_Report_0.pdf

Additional information and notes from Tristan Toleno:
Vacancy Savings Notes
Governor is using 57m of anticipated workforce vacancies across all budgets and funding sources (including global commitment) to mask the pressure of his revenue and fee contractions and the negative impacts of the workforce crisis. They assert they are using “historical” data to determine the allocations, but there are several fundamental reasons to doubt that claim. The data suggests they took an overall level of savings to keep their top line budget close to the Governor’s guidance of 3% increases and to ensure more is available for carry forward reversions in Jan 2025. 

How and why the line by line determinations were made is unclear and raises questions. Among them:

Why would they budget a vacancy savings rate of nearly 30% for the budget for the Governor’s office, when they have only one open position? Why would they budget no vacancy savings for DOL, which has been dealing with significant staffing problems for years?Why would they direct (24,862) in savings to the Human Rights Commission, who are fully staffed, forcing them to possibly cut staff hours?What history is most predictive of how to budget well now? The Governors budgeted vacancy savings of 57m as applied by the Gov Rec against the personal services lines of these same dept and agencies = 3.3%. Personal services is a pretty good proxy for state workforce costs, though it does include some non-state workforce costs. The two year vacancy rate has been closer to 11% and the DHR data does not support the theory that we can return to a pre-pandemic “normal” history any time soon.

Budgeting slightly more now in vacancy savings is defensible, and we are also doing it in a way which doesn’t lead to the kind of distortions being experienced by the HRC, since we direct the Governor to find the additional savings across all of the budgets.

State Workforce Crisis Data
From DHR
Unique Applications for state jobs 2019 18,778 to 2023 12,690
Down to 10.8 Apps per Opening

“Even more striking is that nearly 70% of all job openings posted had 10 or fewer applicants.”
“The offer acceptance rate was 75.8%, which is low by most standards.”
Turnover Rate: 13%
Net gain of only 256 from last year
Higher rate than any year since 1998, even counting years with retirement incentives.

“For Fiscal Year 2023 nearly 75% (74.4%) of voluntary terminations occurred in the first five years of service. Nearly 40% occurred in the first year of employment. A startling 10% of hires didn't make it beyond 30 days. And over 26% did not complete six months.”

“Over that past five fiscal years the entire salary distribution has “shifted.” The number of employees decreased in the...

April 5, 2024: The State Auditor's office has released its assessment of Vermont's role in the Jay Peak, Burke Mountain, and AnCBio EB-5 fraud. Auditor Doug Hoffer joins the show to share his office's findings. We discuss how to prevent a similar situation as the EB-5 fraud happening again.
To read The Auditor's Report: https://auditor.vermont.gov/sites/auditor/files/documents/EB-5%20Final%20Report.pdf
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net

March 29, 2024: John Walters of The Vermont Political Observer updates us on the state of the General Assistance housing program. Or, as John describes it: "We have a housing crisis at all price points. We have a humanitarian crisis at the lower-income end."
We also discuss potential legislation to support CUDs and Governor Phil Scott's latest pick for Secretary of Education.
To read John's work: https://thevpo.org
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net

March 22, 2024: Okay, so the Public Assets Institute doesn't really give a thumbs up or down in it's annual State of Working Vermont report. Vermont's economy is a mix of both. PAI Executive Director Stephanie Yu walks us through this year's report. We discuss the labor market, wages, taxes, and income inequality.
Read the report here: https://publicassets.org/library/publications/reports/state-of-working-vermont-2023/
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net

March 15, 2024: Investigative Journalist Leah McGrath Goodman walks listeners through defining corruption or the abuse of the public trust for private gain. She also shares local examples of fraud - World Learning/SIT, Democracy Builders, the EB5 scandal - and their potential impacts on the community.
To follow Leah's work: https://leahmcgrathgoodman.com/
Or, to read Leah's Column C on Substack: https://columnc.substack.com/
To listen to the Brave Little State episode mentioned in our conversation: https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2016-09-02/does-vermont-really-have-an-embezzlement-problem
Theme music by Red Heart the Ticker: http://rhtt.net/